PORT-AU-PRINCE, March 13 (Reuters) - One of Haiti's most wanted gang leaders was
arrested on Tuesday as security forces intensified efforts to crack down on criminal gangs
in the troubled Caribbean country, authorities said.

In this picture released by the United Nations Stabilization Mission in
Haiti (MINUSTAH) Haitian Police escort Evens Jeune, a top gang leader from the extrmely
violent slum of Cite Soleil, after he was handed over by the U.N to the local authorities
at the U.N airport of Port-au-Prince Tuesday, March 13, 2007. Jeune was captured Tuesday
during a raid in the southern coastal town of Les Cayes, U.N. police spokesman Fred Blaise
said. He had fled into hiding after U.N. peacekeepers launched a crackdown to seize
control of the country's largest slum.(AP Photo/Logan Abassi/United Nations) Enlarged
Images

The gang leader, who goes only by the name Evans, was arrested near the southern town
of Les Cayes, where he fled last month after a raid by hundreds of U.N. peacekeepers on
his stronghold in the notorious Port-au-Prince slum of Cite Soleil.

Evans and his men have been linked to a rash of kidnappings in the capital and to
pitched street battles with U.N. soldiers amid Cite Soleil's battered warren of tin-roofed
shanties.

Evans Jeune, one of Haiti's contagious top gang leaders in tight
handcuffs, after he was taken out of the circulation by Haitian Police not far from the
southern town of Les Cayes March 13, 2007. MINUSTAH

"We arrested Evans early this morning with two other people, including his
girlfriend," police Commissioner Fritz Saint-Fort told Reuters.

"We caught him very easily," added Inspector Gilet Alexis Camille, a police
spokesman in Les Cayes. "We had proper intelligence that told us he was in the
area."

Haitian Police escort Cite-Soleil gang leader Evens in Port-au-Prince
March 13, 2007. Evens, one of Haiti's most wanted gang leaders, was arrested near the
southern town of Les Cayes on Tuesday. MINUSHTAH

Several other gang leaders from the capital's sprawling slums have also fled their
strongholds over the last couple of months after U.N.-led security forces stepped up
operations against the gangs.

The 8,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force in Haiti arrived in 2004 after the ouster of
populist President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Many gang leaders are still outspoken supporters of Aristide and see him as a champion
of long-neglected slum-dwellers in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.